This brilliant article provides you with top tips on how you can easily diversify your history curriculum
Weaving greater diversity into the curriculum
Teaching ideas
Three top tips for improving online learning for your students
Here are three top tips to help you set work that is engaging, will make your students think hard and help them make progress.
Ten Top Tips for History Exam Revision
With exams looming, these activities and techniques can help history teachers ensure their students are geared up and ready to perform under pressure.
Using knowledge to make meaning
The debate whimpers on. Knowledge and direct instruction against progress teaching ideas. This debate has been going on since the arguments over the birth of GCSE and before. Historical knowledge is crucially important – lets not forget it. But so is the ability to use this knowledge well. We have[…]
Don’t tell me interpretations are too difficult for Key Stage 3
As stated in a previous blog, the teaching of historical interpretations is a crucial element of developing your student’s historical thinking. If you want to play the game where your teaching is solely about getting kids to ‘pass the test’, to do well in the 9-1 GCSEs then this is[…]
Using knowledge for a purpose – spot the award winning journalist’s mistake
The debate roles on. How important is knowledge in history? What type of knowledge should we be teaching. Substantive? Disciplinary? And, which is more important? Well, we think that both are crucial. We not only want our students to love history and know lots, we also want them to really see how[…]
Etymology in the history classroom: Using language to make it stick
I’m sure many of you who’ve taught a module on female suffrage have had many a tittering class over Isabella Beeton’s advice from 1861, that a wife should rise before her husband, “and having given due attention to the bath, and made a careful toilet…” in order to be what Lord[…]
Five minute tricks to make learning stick for the 9-1 GCSE
With the 9-1 GCSE there is more content to remember than there was with the older GCSE. Fact! We all need to develop short sharp ideas, or ‘tricks’ to make learning stick.
Weimar Germany Revision Jenga with Resources
Revision / re-visiting information to make it stick is hugely important. Revising knowledge regularly will help your students remember better. Fact. To help with this process why not play Weimar Germany revision Jenga in your classroom? The resources are available here for you to download. If you want to find out how[…]
Teaching the fight against domestic fascism in pre and post war Britain
I think I’ve been planning this set of lessons on the fight against domestic fascism since about 1988, when I first saw Celt-punk band, The Men they Couldn’t Hang perform their classic song, the Ghosts of Cable Street at the Lancaster Sugar House. Regular readers of our site will know that we have[…]
Six strategies for using YouTube clips in the history classroom
Here are 6 Strategies for using You Tube clips in the history classroom. YouTube is such a fantastic resource that when you take a step back it is almost impossible to comprehend. If you’d have told me 20 years ago that I could type a few words into a[…]
How using Teacher in Role can raise engagement in the history classroom
I must admit that it is only this year, after 20 years of teaching that I have felt comfortable being a’teacher in role’. I don’t know why, but before I started working with Neil Bates this was something that I shied away from. But on my first day working at[…]
Creating curiosity: Ten stimulating starts to enquiries
If we are to create outstanding learning and learners, we need to engage our pupils to become curious in the classroom. One way to help engage learners and create curiosity is ensure that all enquiries that start in an intriguing and stimulating way. This isn’t a new and revelationary idea. Good teachers[…]
Five top activities with pictures in the history classroom
We love to use images in our lessons – always have done. Ever since we could photocopy them from books, print them onto sheets of paper and put them in front of kids we have used them. There are hundreds of possibilities for using pictures. Here are our five top picture activities[…]
20 Engaging End Products for the History Classroom
Are you bored of setting work that ends up in an extended piece of writing? An essay? An ‘important assessment’? An exam answer? When you tell your class this do they groan and look deflated? Those kids who can’t be bothered don’t bother. You’re marking load increases as your motivation to[…]
Games for the history classroom: Connect 4 to make revision stick
As you can tell we are very keen on using games for the history classroom. Why? Because games are fun. Here is our guide to using Connect 4 to make knowledge stick. Whilst upstairs talking to the MFL team in our school I stumbled across ten Connect 4[…]
Games for the history classroom / Make Knowledge Stick: Odd One Out
Make Knowledge Stick: Odd One Out Recently I have been working really hard to ensure that my GCSE students can recall information over longer periods of time. This is something that I admit, I never really used to think about. I would just teach in an enquiry based way and[…]
The Board Race Game to enliven GCSE judgement questions
The best professional development I have ever had is to work alongside a creative colleague. Just by sitting down for 20 minutes and discussing your lessons for the next day can inspire ideas, or it can reveal fab teaching strategies that you never thought of. In my career I have[…]
Your 7 step guide to Jenga for the history classroom
Here is your 7 step guide to Jenga for the history classroom. This is a great idea for revision or for cementing that key knowledge that needs to be remembered. The idea is simple. Kids play jenga and revise / learn. It really is all about having fun and learning. What[…]
The peasant farming game
It is probably out of fashion at the moment to suggest such crazy ideas as kids having fun in your lessons. Playing the peasant farming game? Don’t be so ridiculous – where is the evidence of exceptional progress by all in the first 10 minutes your SLT may well cry![…]
Games for the history classroom: ‘Prove it’ ‘Challenge it’
We use this simple technique to check and cement learning and to deepen thinking. Playing games in the history classroom can be fun. We love ‘Prove it’ and ‘Challenge it’. As you probably know we are unashamed users of cards in lessons. Why? Well, this is because, if the cards[…]
Games the history classroom: The wall of misconception
Games in the history classroom: The wall of misconception. This is a great idea to use as a mini plenary to check learning in a fun and active way. The class needs to be armed with knowledge for this activity to work. You may have taught them does Richard the[…]
Games for the history classroom: Stepping stones
As you know, we love to use games for the history classroom. Not only are games engaging and fun, they also help cement learning and make knowledge stick. This idea is simple yet highly effective. The unstoppable Neil Bates uses it when doing class revision for GCSE history. It is called[…]
Double continuums to sharpen student’s historical thinking
We would recommend that you sometimes use double continuums to sharpen your student’s historical thinking. This neat idea is really simple. We all want to make our students think more. And I have found over the years that many don’t actually like to think. So this neat idea has helped[…]
Creating overviews at GCSE
Do you teach a thematic study at GCSE? Of course you do. I would recommend that you start off with a tried and tested overview. Something that Alec Fisher and I perfected when we worked together for 10 years. We believed and still do, that if you start a course or[…]
GCSE exam technique placemats
One thing we know works in teaching students to do well in GCSE history exams, is preparing them to write well. Sounds so simple yet we often automatically think our students have this skill because they have arrived in year 10. Unfortunately, this assumption is often wrong!! So how do[…]
1900 -1930s Tarsia
At time of writing I am about to observed by my Head with a potentially challenging year 9 class. The lesson I am going to teach them is the second half of the fab lesson on the Hitler Youth from our Germany package. However, one of my aims of the[…]
Russian Revolution easy tarsia
At the time of writing I have been working with a difficult year 9 class. I have just taken them over and they needed to be more engaged as they struggle to listen at the start of a lesson. In my experience this is a come problem for schools that[…]
Key history terms and definitions
Understanding historical terminology is hugely important if your students are going to make progress in their historical thinking. We need to build our student’s academic literacy. Use this power point download to either create a large display in your class, or to simply use it to help students with the key[…]
Tarsia puzzles for engagement and fun
I am an old cynic – new ideas in teaching pah! For my sins that used to be my initial view when I saw a new idea presented to me by colleague who doesn’t teach our noble subject. But then I was introduced to this idea by an RE colleague. It must[…]
